About Me

I am an ex-scientist and believe in full disclosure… so here is the full story…

Check out my Curriculum Vitae for my career as a scientist.

Firstly, why the “Edgo” in “MacroEdgo”. I come from the small agricultural town of Innisfail in northern Queensland where my Great Grandparents were pioneers after moving there when only 5 houses existed in the town. My Great Grandparents had 13 children, and my Grandparents alone then had 7 children who gave them 26 grandchildren of which I am the youngest (and many of my cousins have grandchildren). Very many of my extended family remain in Innisfail and most of us are referred to as “Edgo” often preceded by our first name – so in Innisfail I am often referred to as “Brett Edgo”. A voila…

I was a research scientist until the age of 34 when the biological clock caught up with my career aspirations. After returning to Australia from 2 highly regarded international research fellowships (in France with the CNRS, the equivalent of Australia’s CSIRO, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany) I was unable to find a way to continue my work or obtain secure employment, and having delayed starting a family to obtain that security, I “retired”from my career when my wife fell pregnant with our first child.

My accountant wife had far superior career security and earnings potential, and with home prices charging ahead (I will discuss this in one of my posts), it really was the only choice for me to assume the role of being the primary carer for our beautiful son who was joined shortly afterwards by another beautiful son.

I won’t pretend that the transition was easy – for 14 years I had poured my heart and soul into my research and I could only imagine a future where I never retired and was the dottery old professor still hanging around the University electron microscopy centre. I was devastated.

Making it worse was the knowledge that my work was important even if it was difficult to obtain funding. For instance, at the time when I retired I was almost certainly the only Australian that had worked with White Spot Virus which was the cause of the disease incursion in south east Queensland prawn farms in recent years. While in France in 2001 I obtained funding from Biosecurity Australia (my previous employer) to expose native Australian freshwater crayfish to the virus to determine their susceptibility.

Because I could not even contemplate another future for myself, I went “cold turkey” and retired immediately with the clicking of the “send” button of the email announcing it to my colleagues. And within a few weeks I was in the emergency room of a hospital having a breakdown, panicked at the thought of how I could ever deal with my loss.

That was a long time ago, and I now am entirely certain that ending my career was best for me and my family. I am extremely satisfied and happy with the course of my life. Becoming a stay at home Dad is my ultimate fulfillment and, while I left behind a body of research of which I will be forever proud, my primary role in raising two quality young men – worldly, rounded, confident and at ease within the world – is easily my most enduring contribution to mankind.

But I still had a very active, analytical mind and I yearned to contribute to societal progression.

I submitted my PhD thesis in October 1996 and earned my first professional income a few months later when I was very nearly 27 years of age. Even though my work was far more important to me than money – eg. when moving to France with my wife in 2001 our joint income fell by 80%! – having foregone so much earning potential I instinctively knew that I needed to use well whatever funds my wife and I were able to accumulate. So I became a voracious reader of financial and investment literature as well as Business media. Thus began a long and enduring passion.

I was raised on a sugarcane farm, which was originally owned by my Great Grandfather, and my parents had long struggled with meeting debt obligations taken on to clear additional land during (what turned out to be the end of) the 1970’s resources boom. My father always regretted listening to industry and Government forecasters who encouraged those that had capacity to expand to do so as they forecasted sugar prices to remain high for the foreseeable future.

From this I instinctively understood that I needed to develop a strong knowledge of markets and economics to insulate myself from “salespeople” peddling agendas which are not necessarily in my best interest. I realised that it is not sufficient to plead ignorance and blame others for my decisions – if I was going to take on risk than I was going to be informed and take responsibility for my successes and failures.

On returning to Australia in 2003 Brisbane was in the grips of the first leg of the house price run up as the housing bubble spread from the larger southern centres. I will go into greater detail in a post but suffice to say that by 2007 I was ready to turn my market analytical talents to providing an alternate opinion to the property-conflicted mainstream media.

In 2007 I launched my website “Homes4Aussies” shortly before I shirt-fronted a newly installed PM Rudd at a Community Cabinet meeting in northern Brisbane (see here). Even more than my personal early glimpse at Rudd’s now famous temper, I remember the meeting for being taunted at arm’s length by Treasurer Wayne Swann. And I honestly shook all the way home as I congratulated myself for showing such admirable restraint while wondering how it would have played out in the press if a guy who had had his rent raised by 30% in one year while saving for a home deposit while property investors pushed prices to surge higher, with a second child on the way, while recovering from a breakdown after finishing an accomplished career in scientific research due to lack of opportunity in this country, took a swing at the Treasurer after he taunted him with “you’re dreaming if you think negative gearing will ever be ended!”

I drove traffic to my website by blogging widely on mainstream media and listing as my location my website (I had not seen anybody do that previously).

I wanted to play a role in public policy debate. But most of all I wanted to show particularly younger Australians that there were alternate views to the ones that they were being bombarded with in the mainstream media. I wanted to challenge these so that fellow Australians might stop to think twice before committing to a future of debt repayment for an asset that they were being told only ever went up in price and where they could not lose. For example, I blogged against and attempted to initiate a wager with the realestate agent author of a report which featured in all major Brisbane papers who forecasted that the median price of Brisbane houses would rise exponentially and would reach $1 Million soon after 2015.

I was also invited to participate in several online debates.

And I proudly walked with Steve Keen on his first day out of Canberra after losing his infamous bet which Rory (where are you these days?) Robertson ambushed him with the proposed wager at a public presentation.

A lot of things happened around those times. Such is the passion around housing investment that I received a lot of threatening email which, on reading, my family would wonder why I persisted with my efforts. On this site I have placed as much of my work from that time as possible, but unfortunately I lost quite a lot when my computer was hacked. I was tight-lipped about having been hacked for a few weeks but within a couple of hours of me mentioning it in an email to Tony Richards of the RBA I received a phone call from my bank saying that my credit card had been cancelled due to suspicious activity which had just occurred. I accept that it could be coincidence but I think it highly likely that I was being surveilled (by someone) at the time.

I became quite active on a blogsite named “Bubblepedia” set up by Sydney anaesthetist Daniel Cox and I think it is fair to say that I was a key contributor and my involvement was a major reason for it’s growth in popularity. In the midst of widespread group think around housing I found it helpful to “hang out” with like-minded individuals often in similar situations. I have always been careful not to provide advice but I was keen to provide my opinion on factors surrounding the housing market and the purchase decision.

While active on Bubblepedia I led the development of flyer which was available to print and deliver into mailboxes, and donations received funded the printing and delivery of the flyer in the electorates of PM Rudd and Treasurer Swann.

In late 2011 I bowed out from blogging on Bubblepedia as I had been hard at it for 4 years and there were some quality contributors entering the space who I felt could do a better job than myself. Three of these went on to form MacroBusiness. And by this time I had bought a family home which required work and I was happily getting on with that.

I left the group saying that I wanted to write a book around the issues of the home purchase decision process. But I was never committed enough to sit down and write it. In many ways this site will pick up on that desire, although housing will only be a minor focus, in a more progressive manner than writing a large treatise in one hit!
After Bubblepedia I continued blogging occasionally on MacroBusiness, and in the early days had a couple of Guest Posts.

However, in 2017 I pulled my support for MacroBusiness due to concerns over the way that they are prosecuting their arguments around immigration. As I explained to Leith Van Onselin when he called to discuss my withdrawal of support, I had become increasingly concerned with their emotional language, and the final straw was Leith’s use of the xenophobic terminology “white flight” in a post. Leith immediately admitted it was a mistake to use the term and edited the post upon my objection, but I explained that it is an error that should not have been made. The response by other participants to my objection in the comments section below his post really confirmed my greatest concern that the site is acting as a ecosphere for people who have ramped up and seek to further ramp up xenophobic emotions – Leith informed me that they do not moderate comments, which in itself is problematic in my view.

I read on occasions comments about the choice of Homes4Aussies as the name for my website. It should be noted that one’s definition of who is an “Aussie” is very much subjective, and all should be assured that mine is a very broad interpretation and I have always been very clear about that. In fact, my aim was to help all people seeking housing in Australia whether they be temporary residents right through to peoples who have resided in our geographical area for 40,000 years.

I never cease to be amazed by how quickly us human beings connect. If you need any assurance of that just participate in a student exchange and see how many children and adults are crying a the end of the week! (We have recently participated in two exchange programs and our guests leaving was sorrowful for our family.)

Anybody who respects us and our country enough to wish to spend some of their life here – even if just a year on a working holiday – almost certainly considers themselves partly “Aussie”, and I certainly see them as just that.

I vividly remember singing with moist eyes, arms around each other, “We are Australian” with an Indian-Aussie guy at an entertainment night during a month-long workshop in China. I love multicultural Australia and it is what I am most proud about this country. And being overseas, amongst intellectual and worldly fellow Humboldt Fellowship recipients, answering questions about the children overboard election was one of my most embarrassing and disappointing moments as an Aussie!

As I said in my parting comment on MacroBusiness, human beings are at their best when they seek to unite not divide.

Most recently I have only blogged infrequently on various investment websites and most frequently on Roger Montgomery’s. I have re-posted on this site some of my more recent comments as they remain topical and are themes that I will surely return to in the weeks and months ahead.

During my early blogging activities I seriously entertained the idea of challenging PM Rudd in the political arena by running against him in his electorate as an independent, admittedly not with any fantasy of actually beating him but with the aim to draw attention to the housing affordability issue.

However, after a few years of intense blogging I realised that I did not possess the mental health capacity to be so actively and publicly engaged in public debate, and this was also a factor in me stepping back from blogging.

As an early teenager I was exposed to chronic stress and conflict, and on one occasion I had to to bravely stepup to prevent a seriously violent escalation which could have had catastrophic outcomes.

These times left scars on my mental health, and in part precipitated my breakdown later in life when I was confronted by extreme stress and loss. As a consequence, while being reasonably adept at conflict and heated debate, I know that prolonged conflict – such as protracted debating – takes a toll on my mental health and causes me great anxiety.

While I wish to have my views heard on these critical issues, I need to do so in way which protects my health.

That is why, unlike on my first website and through my blogging activities on other sites, and although I respect others’ rights to have their voice heard, there is no opportunity on this site for others to state their supportive or contradictory views, there are no contact details to voice disagreement directly to me, and I aim to not publicly respond to any comments about me or this site.

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